How many of you have ever watched super-8 movies? These items are to video as cylinder recordings are to audio. During the 1970’s I spent many hours shooting, editing and watching creations made with this art form.
Here is a large pile of ephemera – 80 little reels of 40-year-old movies, half a dozen larger reels, and a couple of boxed 16mm movies from 50 years ago. This is the first lot that I am taking to be digitized. None of these movies have been projected in decades.
What is going to be on this film? I imagine there will be plenty of swimming and diving on these reels, though I think most of the swimming footage is on different reels that have yet to see the light of day. The key movies in this lot likely will be from the Renaissance Faire from 1971 and 1972. Both my dad and I shot quite a few minutes of movie film of Perfumes of Araby, featuring Diane Webber.
One little movie I hope to discover here is one I made with a couple of friends back in the early 70’s. Back then it was possible to hike right up to the Hollywood Sign on Mt. Lee. My friends were of Canadian heritage, and one of them had a nice maple leaf shirt on, so we decided that the movie would be a Canadian exploration of the Hollywood Hills in which the intrepid young explorers would claim the Hollywood Sign for Canada.
How many of you would like to watch movies of yourself at age 14? After all, that’s the time of life when everybody is at their most attractive! At least a few will get the chance fairly soon, because one of the movies in this pile of reels is one I made at Yosemite back in the spring of 1973, on a school field trip with a lot of bright kids. The school bought a Yashica LD6 which I got to use on that trip.
“Nostalgia is a longing for something you couldn’t stand anymore.” Soon I will offer more proof!
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